


This Is Where We Start Again

by IndigoNight



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Body Dysphoria, Deaf Clint Barton, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 10:25:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10092224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoNight/pseuds/IndigoNight
Summary: When Clint brings home a baby and wants to keep her, Bucky must confront his  lingering body issues and whether or not he’s ready for the challenges of parenthood.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for the [Winterhawk Minibag 2017](https://www.tumblr.com/following). Title taking from the Goo Goo Dolls song Come To Me.
> 
> Check out the [adorable art](http://fee-does-band-art.tumblr.com/post/158044878982/my-submission-for-the-winterhawk-minibang-this) by Fee.

Bucky lays on his back and stares at the ceiling while he listens to the infernal screaming coming from the next room. Clint, blissfully ignorant, is starfished across the bed, one leg thrown over Bucky’s lower body, his face mashed into the crook of Bucky’s neck, and leaking a puddle of drool onto Bucky’s shoulder. Clint is really lucky that Bucky finds him adorable, because at the moment Bucky hates him, just a little bit.

This is, after all, entirely Clint’s fault.

The screaming hits a new pitch and Bucky is tempted to shove Clint out of the bed in retaliation. Clint lets out a short snort-snore and burrows his face deeper into Bucky’s shoulder and for a second the urge is almost irresistible. But less than sixteen hours ago Bucky had watched a building collapse with Clint still inside of it, and the echoes of the world tilting horror he’d felt during the 3.75 eternal minutes it had taken for Clint to kick his way out of the surface of the rubble are still a faint, jittery buzz in Bucky’s veins. 

So instead of shoving Clint to the floor and making him go deal with the mess he created, Bucky quietly and carefully replaces his shoulder with an actual pillow under Clint’s face and creeps out of the bedroom.

In the living room, the noise feels louder, like a physical thing pressing against him, and the dull twist of guilt he’d felt trying to ignore it from the bedroom instantly becomes a sharp throb. It only takes a few steps to cross over to the crib in the middle of the room and then he’s leaning over the edge, staring down at the tiny red face and flailing fists that accompany the noise. 

Bucky reaches out to pick up the baby, an ancient, instinctive move from some long ago past and younger sisters that he barely remembers but Steve likes to tell him stories about. It’s a brief moment of almost connection with the self he was before he became a soldier, the self that he knows now he’ll only ever remember in fragments and echoes from the stories Steve tells him. But the moment comes to a horrible, crashing end when the light coming in through the window glints off of the metal surface of his left hand. He jerks back so hard and so fast that he jostles the structure of the crib, making the baby cry even louder.

Bucky’s heart is hammering in his chest and he holds the metal hand out, away both from the crib and his own body. His throat has gone tight and his right hand might be shaking. He doesn’t hate the metal hand - usually; it’s undeniably useful, and years of combined therapy and practical examples have allowed him to - mostly - see the hand as a tool that belongs to him, rather than a foreign weapon that was forcibly grafted to his body. But he stares at that too small, too fragile little body in the crib and he just… can’t. Rationally, he knows that he has near perfect control over the prosthesis - that’s what it is, a prosthesis, not a weapon, and it isn’t even HYDRA’s any more, Tony has almost completely rebuilt the thing several times over since any HYDRA scientist had their hands on it - but suddenly he can’t stop imagining, what if he accidentally squeezes too hard? What if somehow a tiny finger gets caught between the plates - that won’t happen, it can’t happen, the plates have a coating over them so that nothing can get pinched in the grooves - but what if? He’s killed so many people, destroyed so much-

He backs away from the crib, stomach churning.

This isn’t even his responsibility anyway. Clint’s the one who had crawled out of the wreckage of the AIM research base clutching the wiggling bundle of blanket and baby. Clint had insisted - loudly and vehemently, while refusing medical treatment for himself - that they couldn’t let the baby disappear into ‘some goddamn _system_ where she’ll become some fucking number with no one to watch out for her!’ Bucky isn’t sure exactly how the whole conversation had gone down because he’d been busy making sure that Clint didn’t fall over and verifying for the fourth, fifth, and sixth times that he had in fact gotten out of a collapsed building with nothing more serious than a few scrapes and bruises, _this time_. Clint had faced off against everyone; from Tony - insisting that babies are loud and unhygienic and thus shouldn’t be in his Tower, to which Clint had pointed out that _Tony_ tends to be loud and unhygienic - to Steve - worrying about responsibility and babies needing a safe and stable environment. Bruce had some legitimate concerns about the fact that they had no idea what the baby was doing in the AIM base and the potential that it was in some way enhanced, which could prove dangerous for both the baby herself and for anyone trying to care for her. Fury had even shown up to do a lot of shouting that Bucky had completely tuned out because no one ever listened to him anyway. But in the end, Natasha had simply crossed her arms and told Clint that if he wanted to keep it - until they found a suitable alternative - he would have to ‘feed and walk’ it.

So they’d ended up with a baby in their apartment. JARVIS, with his usual terrifying efficiency and possibly psychic predictions, had a crib, several bags of diapers, cans of formula and bottles, a stack of onesies, a handful of age appropriate toys, and other miscellania that Bucky isn’t entirely sure what to do with but is presumably somehow important for baby care, waiting in their living room when they got there. Clint had happily and competently changed the baby into a clean diaper and a purple onesie, fed her a bottle, and then cooed her to sleep. Then promptly dropped into his and Bucky’s bed and passed out, barely pausing long enough to take out his hearing aids.

But now Bucky is stuck, neither able to tolerate letting the baby cry any longer, nor able to make himself pick her up himself. So he gives in, going back into the bedroom and poking Clint - on his not-bruised cheek, with his right hand - until Clint blurrily lurches out of bed. Clint mumbles something incomprehensible, but Bucky clearly, and with perhaps excessive exaggeration, signs _baby_ at him, and Clint catches on quickly. He nearly trips over his own feet three times on his way to the crib, and he’s still yawning when he leans against the side and reaches in, but he scoops the baby up in an effortless, tender way and settles her on his shoulder with a soft kiss to her downy wisps of hair.

It’s sort of mesmerizing to watch Clint handle the baby. He’s still half asleep, but he cuddles her against his shoulder, cooing soothing nonsense at her and almost immediately her screams taper down to sniffly hiccups.

Watching them, Bucky’s throat goes tight and something sharp twists low in the pit of his stomach. He turns away quickly and it’s easier to occupy himself with the minutia of preparing a bottle. He takes his time, carefully warming the water, making sure the bottle is sterile, and mixing in the formula, and by the time he turns back around Clint is slumped in one of the bar stools, his head half cushioned on his own forearm while the baby burbles fussily and drools onto his shoulder. Clint gives Bucky the dopiest, grateful smile as Bucky hands over the bottle, and Bucky’s pretty sure he might be dying a little.

“Sorry she woke you up,” Clint says around a yawn as he shifts the baby around and offers her the nipple.

“Wasn’t asleep,” Bucky says, focused on putting the canister of formula away with more diligence than necessary. It’s not until he turns back around and sees Clint’s bemused and overly patient expression that he catches his mistake; with a grimace he repeats himself in sign, which makes Clint frown.

“What’s wrong? Are you mad? You’re mad.” Without his hearing aids in, Clint tends to overcompensate and speak more quietly than necessary, but there’s a nervous tension to his ramble. “I know I said I’d deal with the baby, and I totally will, am. I totally am. We can probably work something out so that JARVIS wakes me up so you don’t have to-”

Bucky rolls his eyes and holds up a hand to stem the tide of words so that he can fetch Clint’s hearing aids from the bedroom. When he hands the aids over, Clint holds out the baby to him with a clear expectation of exchange, but Bucky’s pulse thuds in his throat and he quickly takes a step back. Clint narrows his eyes but manages to free up one hand enough to get his ears on. “You never said that you hate babies,” Clint accuses as soon as he’s resettled the baby; he looks somehow crestfallen, and there’s a distinct pout to his lips.

“I don’t,” Bucky protests, immediate and instinctive because he’d have to actually be the monster that HYDRA tried to turn him into if he wanted to resist that look, but he takes another step back, away from the tiny, fragile bundle in Clint’s arms.

“Right,” Clint says, drawing out the ‘i’. “Well, it’ll probably be at least a week before they sort through those AIM files, but after that it shouldn’t be hard to find her a good home.” Clint doesn’t look at Bucky as he says it, instead focusing too hard on tucking a towel around the baby to catch the dribbles escaping her mouth.

Abruptly, the churning unsettled feeling in the pit of Bucky’s stomach resolves itself. He has to reach out and take hold of the counter as it hits him - the thing he’d known deep down since he’d first seen Clint crawl out of the building rubble but didn’t understand. “You really want to keep her,” he says.

Clint’s head jerks up, and his mouth opens and closes a few times before his shoulders slump and he looks back down. He sets the now empty bottle aside and rubs the flat of one calloused thumb over the baby’s soft cheek, deflating with a huff. “I know it’s dumb,” he says in a mumble.

“ _That’s_ dumb. You’d be a great dad,” Bucky retorts before he can catch himself, but Clint’s genuine look of pleased surprise makes it worth it. 

The moment doesn’t last long before Clint hunches back in on himself. “But you don’t like kids, and I don’t wanna-”

“I… like kids,” Bucky cuts him off, because he doesn’t want to hear the end of that sentence. He has to falter a moment, because he _does_ like kids, but that is not in anyway the same thing as being qualified to parent one.

“Cool, you can burp her then.” Clint smirks, holding the baby out like she’s Simba.

Bucky doesn’t realize he’s moved until his back hits the fridge. Clint’s smirk instantly becomes a frown. 

“I’m… gonna put her back to bed,” Clint says slowly, staring hard at Bucky in a way that means he’s not going to let this go. He makes quick work of burping her and wiping the spittle off of her mouth, but as soon as he tries to put her back in the crib she starts screaming again.

Bucky takes his time carefully cleaning out the bottle and putting it away, then gathers the towels Clint had used and takes them to the hamper. But the baby won’t settle; every time Clint tries to put her down she screams. Bucky would really like to go back to bed and leave Clint to the situation he brought on himself - and thereby conveniently avoid the conversation that he definitely doesn’t want to have - but he can’t quite bring himself to leave. He watches Clint pace back and forth across the room, a rhythmic bounce to his gait as he shushes the baby pleadingly. JARVIS helpfully dims the lights and plays some low, soothing music. The baby proves perfectly content to sleep with her face mashed into the crook of Clint’s neck, but wants nothing to do with the crib. 

Bucky ends up slumped on the couch, watching while Clint paces. He feels a little bit like he’s in the downward spiral of a free dive without a parachute - wildly out of control and inevitably barrelling toward a painful crash. Sitting there watching Clint, Bucky can almost imagine this life, imagine having a kid. Lots of late nights like this, sleeplessness and screaming, but also sweet smiles, eventually first steps, and words, and school, and playdates, and someday actual dates, and- But it’s crazy, for so many reasons but not least of which being that Bucky can’t bear to touch the kid.

Eventually Clint gives up and slumps down on the couch next to Bucky, the baby soundly asleep on his shoulder. Bucky eyes the tiny body sideways and struggles against the urge to edge away. It’s ridiculous - rationally Bucky knows that - but he can’t seem to shake the conviction that his very presence will somehow hurt the tiny child that Clint can handle so easily.

“Spill,” Clint says, keeping his voice low even though the volume of their conversation doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the baby’s ability to sleep, so long as she’s being held.

“I can’t-” Bucky tries, but his throat feels like it’s closing up and he really, really wants to pull both of them into his arms and kiss their stupid faces. He wants this, forever and undeniably his. He may not have fallen for the baby as instantly as Clint had, but he’s there now - truly and utterly fucked.

Clint watches him and waits, surprisingly patient - though it is roughly three in the morning, so maybe he’s just falling asleep with his eyes open again. It is quiet in their apartment, JARVIS still playing soothing, almost inaudible music and the light is a dim, ambient glow. Clint’s face is a mess of bruises and stubble, his hair sticking up wildly, and his shirt is covered in baby drool, and god-fucking-damn he’s beautiful.

It unsticks the words, humiliating and irrational as they are. “I don’t want to hurt her,” he confesses. Clint’s half tilted sideways so that he’s leaning against Bucky’s flesh shoulder but he sits upright at Bucky’s words, his expression going indignant and obstinate. 

“That’s the stupidest-” he starts, but stops, catching himself. His eyes flick down to the metal hand that Bucky has unconsciously half crammed against the arm of the couch and his lips purse into a flat, tight line. Clint takes a slow, careful breath before speaking again. “Is it malfunctioning?”

Bucky swallows and shakes his head. They’ve learned, through hard won trial and error, when it’s okay to poke at each other and when to be careful, but it still sometimes knocks Bucky for a loop that Clint can so quickly go so soft and gentle when a touchy subject comes up.

Clint’s quiet for a long minute, then he slowly and deliberately reaches across Bucky to thread his strong, bandaged fingers through Bucky’s cold, metal ones. Bucky can’t help the instinctive way his shoulders tighten and he very deliberately doesn’t let the arm move. He can’t look at Clint, but he can’t bring himself to pull away either. “Squeeze,” Clint says, and the reassuring understanding in his voice makes Bucky want to cry a little.

Bucky stares down at their hands, blinking hard against the way his eyes burn. He can’t do it. He can’t make the joints of his fingers bend; can barely stand the sight of Clint’s soft pink hand against the dull shine of metal.

“You’ve never hurt me,” Clint reminds him. They’ve done this before - back in the early days Bucky had had difficulty touching Clint with the metal hand at all, though that had been more about the way people tended to flinch away from the cold, hard metal. Clint waits, his chin now resting on Bucky’s flesh shoulder while his free hand keeps the sleeping baby easily balanced.

“She’s… She’s so _small_.” Bucky hates how rough his voice sounds, how brittle he feels. 

“Yeah, but the really terrifying part is that she won’t stay that way,” Clint jokes.

Bucky huffs and shakes his head. “You really think that’s helping?” But the somber mood is broken and after a few slow, deep breaths, Bucky manages to curl his fingers around Clint’s hand and squeeze, just a little. 

Clint grins and presses a kiss to the skin at the base of Bucky’s neck. “You really want to do this?” he asks, and now it’s Clint’s turn to sound rough and brittle, nervousness and hope and maybe a little giddy recklessness all mixed together.

“Yes,” Bucky says. He’s still scared as all hell, and it might still take him a while to work up to actually holding the baby, but in this quiet moment, the three of them curled up in the insulated little bubble of their apartment, it feels inevitable.

“‘Course, we still have to convince everyone else to let us keep her,” Clint points out. He shifts a little, pressing closer to Bucky until Bucky’s flesh hand finds its way automatically onto Clint’s thigh.

“Well, I guess if she is enhanced, that’ll be a point in our favor,” Bucky rationalizes. He doesn’t want to think about the risk of losing the baby, not when admitting that he wants her is still so fragile and new. “I mean, we’re more equipped to handle that than most adoptive parents.”

Clint fidgets again, shifting this time so that the baby is settled between them and her little head rolls to nestle against Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky’s breath goes tight for a moment, but he breathes out slowly and the moment passes. “I know,” Clint says, craning his neck back so that he can smirk at Bucky, “I’ll just tell Steve about your little break down, and then he’ll do that whole misty-eyed so-proud-of-you thing he does. And once he’s on board he can badger Tony into agreeing. And anyway, Pepper _loves_ babies, so it’s not like we even really need them. Natasha will probably support us as long as we promise she never has to go near a dirty diaper. So, you know, that pretty much settles that. Pepper has literally all the lawyers, Natasha is just straight up terrifying, and Steve can deploy the Glower of Patriotic Disapproval, and we’re all set. No one would dare try to take her from us.”

Bucky snorts, but he can’t honestly argue with Clint’s logic. “Guess that just leaves one issue to settle then,” he says. Gingerly he tightens his metal fingers around Clint’s hand and lifts it, pressing a kiss to Clint’s bandaged fingertips. “She needs a name.”

“Hurricane,” Clint says immediately. “Hurricane Rose Barnes-Barton. Barton-Barnes?”

“Not a chance in hell,” Bucky retorts. “And definitely Barton-Barnes. It’s too hard to say the other way around.”

“Metallica.” Clint’s grinning, broad and goofy now. “Banjo. Zuma.”

“Zuma, what the- no.”

“It’s a beach. A really nice beach.”

“No.” It’s all Bucky can do to contain his laughter, desperate not to wake the baby.

“No, wait, I got it!” Clint proclaims in a slightly hysterical whisper-giggle, “Supreme Queen of the Universe.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Bucky grumbles, kissing Clint before he can say anything else ridiculous.

“Language,” Clint teases between kisses. “We are honest-” he huffs out a breath of laughter, “-respectable-” Bucky sucks on Clint’s bottom lip, making the end of the word turn into a squeak, “parents-” Clint gives up, dissolving into barely smothered giggles.

Bucky tilts his head back to stare at the dimly lit ceiling, the muffled sound of Clint’s laughter and the soft puff the baby’s breath against his shoulder quietly and irrevocably turning his world inside out. He’s surprisingly okay with it.


End file.
